DougJ got the day started with yet more evidence that the Republican Party remains committed to a program of immiserating the miserable.

I dug into my note pile to find yet one more DFH squealing his soft-headed liberal pieties in the face of such intellectual courage:

Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage or as an inconvenience to the society? The answer seems at first sight abundantly plain. Servants, laborers, and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.

The liberal reward of labor, as it encourages the propagation, so it increases the industry of the common people. The wages of labor are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the laborer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days perhaps in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious than where they are low.

Here’s minister-philosopher-bass player Huckabee, today on the Big Gummint Threat to Guns(pbut).

CALLER: I’m very concerned, it seems like there’s so many people who have not read and do not understand how quickly Germany was turned into, it was a democracy, then turned into a dictatorship by everyone having to register their guns and then they went door to door and collected them.

HUCKABEE: People do forget that. And by the way, [caller] know, that when you bring that up you get people who get crazy on us, and they’ll start saying, “Oh there you go comparing to the Nazis.” And I understand the reaction, but it’s the truth. You cannot take people’s rights away if they’re resisting and if they have the means to resist, but once they’re disarmed and the people who are trying to take over have all the power, not just political, not just financial, but they have the physical power to domesticate us and to subjugate us to our will there’s not a whole lot we can do about it other than just plan to die in the course of resistance. It’s very true [caller], and I appreciate you bringing it up. I know that people are probably calling and saying you know you shouldn’t have brought that up. In every society and culture where dictators take over, one of the things they have to do is get control of the military and the police and ultimately all of the citizens and make sure the citizens are disarmed and can’t fight in the streets. Gosh I hope it doesn’t come to that.

I know there are other things to FP, but just an FYI for maybe an later open thread, but as you go about the rest of your evening, can we take time to remember, that 45 years ago today, Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in Memphis, TN at the Lorraine Motel. Here is a an excerpt from his last speech, the “I’ve Seen The Mountaintop” speech. It was the last one he ever gave, he was assassinated the next day.

“We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

Speaking of bilge, Jake Tapper asked Mark Sanford: Who are you to deny love between two men or two women, when you are somebody who talks about following his heart, regardless of the laws and traditions of the state of South Carolina? Why are you sitting in judgment of same-sex couples, when you have had the life you have had?

A tricky poser, right? Not at all – Sanford just stole some word salad from Sarah Palin to make his views clear:

Well, I think that it’s important not to redefine my view, which to an extent, what you just described, is. What I’ve said is, I indeed back in 1996, voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, I was a member of Congress, you know, just as President Clinton signed the bill into law, and just as President Clinton, and just as President Obama up until about a year ago allegedly believed and prescribed that same law.

Republican economic policy has its intellectual roots in Social Darwinism. They don’t use the term anymore because (1) Darwin is a 4-letter word (even though he has nothing to do with Social Darwinism) and (2) they like to fool people into thinking their policies benefit everyone rather than only the “fittest.”

Those Scottish Enlightenment folks were an interesting bunch. But why would you expect “free marketers”* to have read the fundamental text of their movement when their religious equivalents haven’t bothered to read the Bible?

@lamh35: A dickhead at lunch tried to make a joke about “James Earl Ray Day” being today. Did not go very well for him. As part of that conversation someone mentioned that the U2 lyrics “Early morning, April 4, Shots rang out in the Memphis sky” are inaccurate. Shooting happened at 6 p.m.

I have zero faith in NC to decide on not sending this douche to congress. And let me add, Knockwursts like this Do Not Help:

The Democrat who opposed Elizabeth Colbert (kohl-BURT’) Busch in the primary for a vacant congressional seat has endorsed her Republican opponent, former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.

Ben Frasier got only 4 percent of the vote last month against Colbert Busch, the sister of political satirist Stephen Colbert (kohl-BEHR’). Frasier says that he’s a conservative Democrat and that Colbert Busch doesn’t represent the district’s conservative values.

It’s an enduring belief of mine that the people who actually found belief systems (or simply intellectual, philosophical or political schools of thought, like Adam Smith, though those can devolve into belie systems pretty quickly) are usually not bad guys. It invariably seems to be the followers who pick up the mantle who take the fairly reasonable worldview, charge off to extremes that their originator never intended, and ruin it for everyone else.

Adam Smith, like Karl Marx, Jesus, Mohammed… sort of an okay guy, right? But then you get the Ayn Rands, the Stalins, the Torquemadas and the Khomeinis and everything goes to shit.

I’ve always thought that one of the worst things about being that kind of historical figure would be the knowledge that that would happen to your legacy.

@Baud:
And modern liberalism has as its roots the refutation of social darwinism:

“When a well-clothed philosopher on a bitter winter’s night sits in a warm room well lighted for his purpose and writes on paper with pen and ink in the arbitrary characters of a highly developed language the statement that civilisation is the result of natural laws, and that man’s duty is to let nature alone so that untrammeled it may work out a higher civilisation, he simply ignores every circumstance of his existence and deliberately closes his eyes to every fact within the range of his faculties. If man had acted upon his theory there would have been no civilisation, and our philosopher would have remained a troglodyte.”

There’s got to be a master list of people who are name-checked all the time, but not actually listened-to

Worse than ‘not actually listened-to’. Our name-droppers torture the very language we use until they can conjur those famous names in support of ideas 179.5 degrees removed from the intent of the original authors. We have always been at war with East Enlightenmentania. Just ask Jefferson, Madison and Smith. Don’t pay any attention to that funny fellow Voltaire, he’s just the hired gardener, and probably an illegal alien to boot.

How many centuries did medieval alchemists fruitlessly spend searching for the secret of how to turn lead into gold? They should have been Movement Conservatives, who have the power to turn gold into lead, without any effort at all.

Any hints on how to recover a 2 terabyte drive that was functioning just fine a few days ago? Hoping not to have to take it to a recovery shop. Simply no money for that. But since it was my backup drive, literally 8 years worth of work and photographs and video projects are stored on it. And I think I may just give up on life if I lose all of it.

Robert Kennedy Jr was getting ready to address a crowd of mostly African American in Indianapolis and had to break the news of MLKJr’s assassination. As I understand it, the whole thing was improvised.

The capricious ambition of kings and ministers has not, during the present and the preceding century, been more fatal to the repose of Europe, than the impertinent jealousy of merchants and manufacturers. The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit of a remedy. But the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind, though it cannot perhaps be corrected, may very easily be prevented from disturbing the tranquillity of any body but themselves.
Adam Smith, “The Wealth Of Nations”, pg. 382

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No longer enslaved or made dependent by force of law, the great majority are so by force of property; they are still chained to a place, to an occupation, and to conformity with the will of an employer, and debarred by the accident of birth to both the enjoyments, and from the mental and moral advantages, which others inherit without exertion and independently of desert. That this is an evil equal to almost any of those against which mankind have hitherto struggles, the poor are not wrong in believing.
John Stuart Mill, “Chapters on Socialism”, Collected Works, pg. 710
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Personal property is the effect of Society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally. Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist, the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation therefore of personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes, on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came. This is putting the matter on a general principle, and perhaps it is best to do so; for if we examine the case minutely, it will be found, that the accumulation of personal property is, in many instances, the effect of paying too little for the labour that produced it; the consequence of which is, that the working hand perishes in old age, and the employer abounds in affluence. It is perhaps impossible to proportion exactly the price of labour to the profits it produces; and it will also be said, as an apology for injustice, that were a workman to receive an increase of wages daily, he would not save it against old age nor be much the better for it in the interim. Make then Society the treasurer to guard it for him in a common fund, for it is no reason that because he might not make a good use of it for himself that another shall take it.
Thomas Paine, “Agrarian Justice” 1797

That last is a particular favorite of mine whenever the right wingers bring up the Founding Fathers.

Adam Smith is now officially a hack. Everyone knows nowadays that it’s only the captains of industry, masters of the universe who need top pay. Where would we be without the genius of men like Jamie Dimon or the London Whale, guiding our financial world with a steady hand on the wheel, navigating between the storms and the shoals?

Paying the minions one penny more than the absolute minimum literally steals the yachts right out of the marinas for our wise overlords. The worker works best when he knows his job is on the line each and every moment of the day. A scared worker is a productive worker, by gum.

Excellent question. My guess is he’ll try to keep her completely out of the public’s eye, because you just can’t polish that turd (definitely not calling her turdish, BTW). He’ll try his hardest to dismiss the whole ridiculous affair, which would have resonated much longer had zombie Michael Jackson not blasted it off the front pages in its infancy.

Noted on an ealier thread that a master stroke for Colbert Busch would be hiring the ex for the campaign. Not enough popcorn in all of Iowa for that.

@Bill Arnold: Spins up, but it won’t mount. Lights flash, minor amount of “who am I, what is this, what do I do” whirring that indicates to me a corruption in the system, but not the clicking that I associate with a drive sector. If I still worked with techs, I could fix it. All I want is to get into the architecture and fix it without messing the files too much.

@WereBear: I would devastated, but I think I’ve hit so much shit in the past decade, I’m calm and reassured at the fact that I did sell my soul to my employer for a loan so I could by a NAS and back up the photos and videos. Reviewing things, I’m about 80% on those, but my writing, scripts, and some of my first cartoons. And my full comic strip artwork. Ok. that is hurting.

@Trollhattan: Meh. If all he could garner was 4% of the vote, he’s probably a crank and definitely a nobody. A ham sandwich should be able to get more votes than that in a primary, even against a well-organized, well-spoken foe.

Yeah, hardly anyone had weapons in Germany between about 1933 and 1945. They just overran most of Europe with a spork and a bunch of flowers. If the Germans had wanted to overthrow Hitler, they certainly weren’t lacking in hardware to do so. They choose not to, well, most of them.

Besides that, you know who did most of the fighting in the streets in Germany in the 1920s? Yep, the Nazis. And you know who were mostly fighting against them? Not the Huckabees of the day, but the commies.

@Brendan in NC: I’ve been making calls to Warren’s constituents on a different issue and found out all calls in to his office were going to voicemail, an indication of the hammering he was taking over this “bill”. Good.

So apparently people are getting in a fuss about Obama mentioning Kamala Harris’ looks at a fundraiser. In context, it doesn’t sound bad at all (he mentions all her really good professional qualities before, and he says it off-hand at the end, from what I can tell).

And she does look good, so he’s not telling a lie. Yet Jonathan Chait is lighting himself up like the firebagger he isn’t over this matter…wtf?

I may read it this weekend while we’re on vacation — I always like to have some light reading on vacation. ;-) Seriously, I do end up reading the heavy books on vacations — I brought Nixonland to Hawaii.

It’s between that and In the Garden of the Beasts, about Nazi Germany.

Also, too, aimai highly recommended The Lost German Slave Girl, and now I can recommend it, too. The author manages to weave the personal story, legal history of slavery, and the history of New Orleans into a very readable book (I read it in one long Sunday, but I read fast). I think the author comes to the right conclusion to the mystery, but in some ways it leaves more questions than it answers (in a good way).

@Omnes Omnibus: I happened, by sheerest coincidence, to visit the Civil Rights Museum the day Coretta Scott King died. It made everything just that much more poignant.

I was 25 when MLK and Bobby Kennedy were murdered. Politically I had been listing to starboard up until then but these two assassinations kicked me straight over to port and I’ve never looked back. The CBS Cronkite clip that lamh linked to brought me to tears. Again.

I remember Martin Luther King Jr. being assassinated and the riots and then Bobby Kennedy. It felt like the country was just falling apart on top of JFK getting shot some years earlier. Actually, I could add even more, but I think y’all know. Part of why I took off on the hippie trail to AFG and India and Nepal with my future husband.

Late on this, but here’s my favorite Smith, from the Theory of Moral Sentiments:

This disposition to admire, and almost worship the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least to neglect, persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of rank and order in society is, at the same time, the greatest and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments

Since it’s an open thread, anyone see that Exxon has used the invisible hand to get a reach around from the FAA. Nobody allowed to see the mess they made in Arkansas. Judging from the dearth of “big news site” coverage most Merkins don’t even know about the spill itself let alone the cover up. Best gubbermint money can buy.

That is why there is a certain amount of irony in the term neoliberal. Smith’s intention was to liberalize the mercantile economics of his day, allowing international markets to determine value rather than tariff and embargo laws. However, he was fully aware of the problems caused by
unregulated markets. Something most neoliberals are not.

That is why there is a certain amount of irony in the term neoliberal. Smith’s intention was to liberalize the mercantile economics of his day, allowing international markets to determine value rather than tariff and embargo laws. However, he was fully aware of the problems caused by
unregulated markets. Something most neoliberals are not.

I turned 11 in November of 1968. I was kind of politically conscious but not really. I remember being shocked when LBJ said he wouldn’t run. I remember seeing footage of RFK being shot, over and over, and how terrible I felt that the same family had been hit twice by political assassination. But something I’ve puzzled about is that I have no memory of hearing about MLK before his death, or about his assassination. I don’t know if that had to do with the news coverage or just that I had a very seleccted view of the news or what.

I remember clearly the riots after he died. But I didn’t know what they were about. It just seemed like part of the “normal” scheme of things in that very terrible year.